A friend of mine is always encouraging me to try this Colloidal Silver stuff for all manner of ailments. He makes his own (using water, some kind of dissolved silver I think and electricity). He claims it cures just about everything and acts in a similar way to antibiotics (as well as, according to him, an anti-viral agent…well, and just about everything else).
So…what is the Straight Dope on this? What does it do…if anything? How does it work (if it does)?
-XT
It will turn you into a blue man
It is not wise to ingest heavy metals when you can avoid doing so. They will fuck with the structure of membranes and proteins.
If you knew how to make a cholesterol reducing drug, but had no idea how to regulate the dose, would you take it? That’s the catch when you make your own colloidal silver medicine. If you get it wrong, your skin could turn permanently blue. Or you could die.
Be careful, it can turn you into an oompa loompa.
Please Yell if you’re ingesting colloidal silver.
I agree it’s probably not a great idea, but is silver actually a ‘heavy metal’ - I know it’s fairly heavy, and it’s a metal, but I thought the term ‘heavy metals’ referred to a specific group (in the same way ‘alkaline metals’ does) - have I just misunderstood that?
Quackwatch is your friend
Well, my friend says he’s been using it for 20 years…and he isn’t blue. So, obviously he knows how to make it right. And it hasn’t killed him or his wife (yet).
Are there any actual studies on this? Has anyone done scientific testing? Assuming you make it right and don’t turn blue or die is there any evidence it actually does anything helpful? I read the quack watch article but it didn’t really go into details. They seemed to be talking mostly about products that had suspended silver in them in the past…and steps that were made to ban such products.
-XT
Ingestion of colloidal silver can have lethal side-effects.
Yes, it’s a heavy metal, about anything metallic past copper qualifies.
As anyone owning real silverware knows, metallic silver is quite prone to tarnishing. Sulfur compounds in the air will quickly turn a polished spoon yellow.
If you drink a silver colloid, it’ll react with cysteine and other sulfur compounds already present in the body.
Why would you even fuck with something that has the potential to permenantly make you look like Pappa Smurf?
Well, I think that guy was that ugly to begin with…
Oh, you meant the blue skin. 
I agree…and after reading this thread I know that I won’t be trying it out. I’m trying to figure out what problem they are trying to solve with this. Is it because in a lab it acts as an ant-bacterial agent, and so it should do the same in the human body or something? Does it actually have ANY positive qualities or is it a total placebo (just one that might turn you blue or kill you)?
-XT
By your criteria “right” and “not at all” produce identical outcomes. Perhaps instead of of making it right, he is making it in such low quantities that it has little effect.
Presumably his evidence is that it has cured him of … what?
Has he taken any other medicine?
People used to take arsenic and claim they felt better. :rolleyes:
I’m…unsure. That was kind of why I came here. He claims it does everything short of raising the dead. I am highly skeptical. I was wondering what, if anything, it DID do.
That was before I found out it was not only BS but possibly dangerous as well.
Lots of herbal type cures and potions. Another one that he is always going on about is (something like) Acenatia and Goldenseal. Whatever that is. Another supposed cure all.
I used the mercury (Chinese) and lead (Romans) ones on him. He was unphased…
Good point. I have no idea. He takes it daily and he brews it up in a huge water jug in his office. It LOOKS completely nasty.
-XT
It does have antimicrobial properties, apparently. A guy in my lab was telling me about a project he worked on previously to immobilise silver nanoparticles in a polymeric matrix for depositing on worktops and the like in kitchens. Saying that, soap has antibacterial properties, it’s difficult to see how silver would have a specific mechanism of action that killed microbes but was harmless towards the human body. We don’t go round eating soap just because it’s antimicrobial.
Silver is still used medicinally for burns and wounds in the form of silver sulfadiazine, in a topical 1% solution to prevent growth of bacteria and fungi in the wound (I used it while while healing up from a rather notable Face Volcano made famous in a thread around here somewhere). “Skin discoloration” is listed as a side effect, although I’ve never seen it specified in detail. Well, if I had extensive 3rd degree burns I’d probably take blue skin in preference to no skin, but if it does occur it must be pretty rare. You absorb very little through use of this cream - quite different than drinking it.
A friend of mine drinks the stuff. (No, he is not blue.) He claims it cures diseases or something. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he mumbled something about health care conspiracies.
He’s not alone… I’ve known a couple others who drink the stuff. All of them seemed to have an affinity for crazy conspiracy theories of the “government cover-up” variety.
Echinacea and goldenseal.
And as Broomstick notes, silver (in the form of sulfadiazine) is used medicinally as an antibiotic ointment. I get it (as Silvadene) not infrequently as I am allergic to gentamicin.
Well, it probably would cure lycanthropy.
The old guy across the road was pouring it into his ears (to avoid a cold? Not sure.) He went deaf for 6 months. The amazing thing is that his hearing did return.
The stuff is poison.